Yesterday I had a really weird, specific gaming urge. Namely, I suddenly felt the urge to gather up a party of stereotypical fantasy characters and go around and hit monsters in the face with swords and fireballs.
…you guys DO know what I’m talking about, right?
The original Final Fantasy is straightforward and to the point. You don’t pick up new party members as you go along, you get all of them before you even start. The “story”, as much as there is one, is pretty much laid out at your feet in the first three minutes. Oh, and there’s grinding. There’s a lot of grinding.
Playing the game yesterday went something like this:
- “Oh hey, I can buy all this armor and magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
- Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
- Spend about three minutes traveling to the next town.
- “Oh hey, I can buy all this upgraded armor and new magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
- Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
And it was at that point that I’d filled my oldschool JRPG grinding quota for the day and I saved and quit for the time being.
Now, you’d think that a system like this wouldn’t have a whole lot of appeal. I mean, if you’re gonna spend the game grinding, you’d might as well pad it with some story and character development, right? That’s how most later RPGs work, right? I mean, if I was gonna play some classic FF, I should’ve picked IV or VI or something. Right?
Maybe.
But there’s something deliciously simple about forgetting all of that and, just, I dunno… throwing lightning bolts and fireballs around for no reason at all, other than to buy some Potions.
And besides, who among us can listen to this song with dry eyes?
Woah, you made those? Damn, I’m impressed!
And yeah, I played FF1 and 2 on that GBA re-release thing thay had several years ago…it was pretty fun!
It nice to go back to the simplistic fantasy roots now and then…there’s an awful lot to found! And it seems like the 8-bit graphics make you use your imagination a littel more, whereas the 3d graphics of today sort of make you do that less.
As I lay here on the couch grinding in Dragon Quest IX, I say I’d have to agree. I love grinding, especially when I can multitask. Sure, I love to sit and play me some good ol story-driven content, but Dragon Quest shares the floor with Final Fantasy as a game that requires a bit of grinding now and again to stay ahead of your foes. So does Pokémon, another of my favorites.
Currently, I’m grinding gold for new weapons and armor. The experience isn’t bad either. However, 80% of my attention is focused on Season 2 of Criminal Minds playing on my monitor. I’m watching one of my favorite shows while simultaneously doing a boring activity that is also incredibly helpful. Win/win.
Same goes for Pokémon. I often do a bit of grinding while, say, waiting for my food to arrive at a restaurant. It’s times like those when I don’t want to get involved with a complex 2-hour storyline. I just want to kill a half hour while waiting for something else to happen.
I know it’s not exactly the main point of your post, but I thought I’d share. :) I made 1500g and 800xp clicking the A button every few seconds while typing this!
I never did play FF (nor really any FF game for that matter) but if FF didn’t exist we wouldn’t have had the awesome that was 8-bit Theatre. I always did like Black mages though when I would to play a FF game without succumbing to prolonged boredom.
Honestly I tend to prefer the old school grinding over the newer stuff- as far as I can tell it is because the newer games tend to try to make the trash mobs you grind harder. I don’t mind long, epic series of bossfights, but trash is trash and you should be able to take out the trash easy enough and in short order.
Been playing FF III for a bit lately and found that each new level of magic you get is not shared in the same mana pool as the former spells, so you can use fire 24 times and firaga like 6, so essentially separate mp pools for each spell and the lower levels of magic don’t really scale at all as far as I can tell.
Why is this an issue and why do I bring it up? Well despite being an overall decent game it totally borks up long grinding sessions when the current spells you need to use to take out the trash are very limited in supply and the previous tier in spells are next to useless outside healing out of combat.
Still working on the Lv 11 Class upgrade challenge in FF1 on the Dawn of Souls cart. Stuck at the beginning. :( Garland does NOT want to drop that damn longsword he has… I’ve made at least 50 attempts for it and so far nothing…
Have to admit though, FF1 NES has been the only one I haven’t beaten yet.
Chaos: 2000 HP
Buff Ninja
Ninja Attacks (16x, 1996 damage!)
Chaos: “lolz. Cur4”
Knight Attacks (4x, 500 damage).
Me: “(%&#$*(%&!!!!!!” *throws controller*